by Zoe Marriott
The soldier swore again, as if in surprise. There was a resounding slap, a heavy thud, as if someone had fallen.
“Where were you hiding, old man?”
The answer came from nearby, as if the speaker was lying on the ground, too. The voice was weak and quavering with fear. “I — I was not hiding, honored soldier-sama. My apologies. I always sleep behind the stove.”
“Where is the girl? The little one? She must be in here; there’s nowhere else.” There was another harsh thud and a choked grunt of pain. “This house has the mark of the traitor on it, do you understand? We can kill anything that moves here, right down to the fleas in your bed. If you lie to me, I’ll slit you open.”
“I — I do not know — no, no, wait! Perhaps . . . perhaps I can help you.” The old man gasped painfully. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“I heard that the younger girl is punished sometimes for climbing and hiding in the orchards.” He wheezed again. “She is very small, and the trees are in bloom. . . .”
In my hiding place, I jerked with shock. I hated heights. I had never climbed a tree in my life. The old man was protecting me.
The mantle of ashes seemed to tighten, as if in warning.
The soldier drew in a sharp breath. “That must be it. No wonder she seemed to disappear. Search the trees!” he shouted out. “She must be hiding in the flowers!”
Hasty footsteps crossed the floor, and the door banged open and shut.
There was another pained wheeze and a shuffling noise, and the old man’s voice came again, much closer this time. “Little Mistress, come out. You must hurry. They will come back soon.”
“Than-thank y-you,” I choked out. I scrabbled at the rough ground, pulling myself forward against the drag of stiff, protesting limbs. A hand, dirty and callused and wiry with muscles, thrust into the hearth to help me. As he dragged me out of the tiny space, I felt the strange blanket of ash flutter and fall away.
The old man was surprisingly broad and strong looking but bent with age. His hair was wispy silver and his eyes bright. He was nearly as covered in ashes as I was.
Before I could feel shamed at kneeling there, naked, before the stove — and it was blurry now, what had happened to my clothes — he shrugged off his filthy outer haori and put it around my shoulders. The man grimaced with pain at the movement. He had taken so many kicks lying in front of my hiding place, lying to protect me.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, clutching the haori to me. It covered me from neck to knees. My voice was a low, toneless croak. “Are you all right?”
“I will live. Can you stand? We must find a better hiding place.”
I nodded, though I was not sure. Supporting each other and terribly conscious of the time it took, we both managed to gain our footing.
“This way,” he said, moving ahead of me. To my surprise, he seemed to be leading me into the blank wall of the kitchen.
“This is where the cook hides most of the ingredients, in case of a theft,” the old man said. He slipped sideways and somehow disappeared into the wall. I lurched after him, scared of being left behind, and found that this wall had been built about a foot out from the real, outer wall. The narrow space between was filled with boxes, bottles and sacks. It was just wide enough for a man to sit down — or a man and a small girl, if they were desperate.
We crushed ourselves inside. The only light came from the slim gap through which we had entered; we had no candles and would not have dared to light them if we did. We worked by feel, bumping elbows and stubbing toes as we shoved boxes and sacks up, blocking the entrance as best we could and clearing a space in the corner, while trying desperately to be quiet.
“What is your name?” I asked him.
“Youta. I am the cinderman,” he whispered back, spreading empty sacks on the floor and then lowering himself onto them with a sound of effort. I huddled down next to him.
“Thank you, Youta,” I said.
“Hush, now. They could return at any time. We must be silent.”
He was right. Twice more that day, soldiers came into the kitchen. We heard their cursing and swearing when they could not find us, and the smashing and crashes as they destroyed anything they could find in their fury.
After the second time, Youta whispered to me, “It must be close to nightfall. They will have to make camp here now. Try to sleep.”
I could not. I knew I could not. I was too frightened to even close my eyes, in case I saw what had happened again, saw it in my head.
But after a time my exhaustion must have sucked me under, for I woke I knew not how long later, a scream of mindless panic on my lips. Instinctively I swallowed it. Youta was just settling back down beside me.
“Where did you go?” I asked, my fingers reaching to clutch at his ragged clothes. I was ashamed of my behavior but could not stop. He was the only person I knew now, and I was terrified of being alone.
“To see if they had left. It is morning, but the horses are still there. We must stay hidden.”
For another day we lived in the tiny space, until the air inside was barely breathable with the stink of us and our dirt. Youta broke open some of the boxes and sacks and made me eat, though the sight of food made me sick, and I gagged when I tried to swallow. The only liquid was alcohol, which set fire to my throat without soothing my thirst. It sent me swiftly back to sleep.
I woke to the sound of people shouting nearby again. I pressed closer to Youta, trembling.
Then I recognized one of the voices.
“Suzume! Suzume!”
It was my mother’s voice.
I leaped up, sending boxes and sacks flying, skinning my hands on the rough floor again as I clambered out of the alcove.
“Mother!” My voice was a dry, scratchy whisper, but I kept trying. “Mother! I’m here!”
My legs, folded under me for so long, could barely support me. I stumbled out of the kitchen, eyes closing against the sunlight. Hot tears streamed down my face.
A slender blue form, rippling with my tears, raced through the trees toward me. I held out my arms like a baby begging to be picked up and was caught in a familiar embrace, enveloped in a familiar perfume, and held tightly and kissed. My legs gave out, and she sagged to the ground with me, not letting go.
“Oh, my baby, my only baby,” she whispered. “I thought you were dead.”
“Aimi,” I said. “Father.”
“I know, I know,” she said, her voice distorted with tears. “Hush now, hush.”
“They killed —”
“Hush, hush, don’t speak of it.”
I was seized with dry, raking sobs that shook my whole body. Mother rubbed my back and stroked my ashy hair, and whispered over and over, “Hush, it’s all right now. You’re safe now. Hush.”
“She’s . . . she’s really alive,” a man’s voice said above us.
I stiffened, then slumped in relief when I realized that the deep voice belonged to Terayama-san, one of Father’s oldest friends. In my confusion I did not wonder why he was there, what he was doing with my mother.
“It is a blessing from the Moon,” Mother said.
“Is she injured?”
I shook my head against my mother’s shoulder, unable to look up. “I am not hurt.”
“What happened here?” Mother implored him. “Daisuke —” Her voice trembled and cut off.
“Things are worse than you know,” Terayama-san said. “This was no random attack. The soldiers came from Tsuki no Ouji-sama.”
“They wore black armor,” I mumbled. “They called Father a traitor.”
“What?” Mother pushed me back, taking my shoulders and shaking me hard. “What did you say? How dare you say that!” I thought she would strike me.
“Yukiko-san, the child is right,” Terayama-san said, dropping to his knee next to us. His massive shoulders blocked the sun enough so that I could squint at him and make out the grave, unhappy lines on his handsome face. “I have seen the black crest nailed to what is le
ft of the door. The mark of the traitor is on the Hoshima house.”
Mother stared at Terayama-san as if he were the traitor. “Daisuke would never —!”
“I know that,” he said. “He was my friend. But it does not matter. The mark is there. The house of Hoshima and all who lived here are forsaken. If anyone offers you shelter or comfort now, their lives are forfeit. If anyone ever finds out who you are, they will have to report you, or risk sharing your fate.”
We both stared at him, shocked into stillness by the stark reality of his words. We had lost everything. Everything. We had no place to live, no way to support ourselves. We were completely alone. Outcast.
“The Royal Guard does not forgive traitors, ever. They butchered everyone here, even the servants. The only person who could spare your lives is the Moon Prince himself, and it is his seal upon the door, his order that you be executed. It is a miracle that the girl survived,” Terayama-san went on. “It is a miracle that you were with me and not —”
Mother stiffened again and spoke swiftly, to cut him off. “What are we to do, Terayama-san? Where will we go, Suzume and me? Will . . . will you abandon us?”
“How can you even ask it?” he said, low and fierce. There was a throb of emotion in his words that made me cringe in shock. I had never heard him speak like that before. His eyes flicked to me, barely seeing me, and returned to Mother as if he could not help himself. “You must come with me, back to my home. We will change your name, make up some story to allow it. The mark means nothing to me.”
“Ryoichi.”
She said his name as if it hurt her, and I was shocked again. I had never heard her speak so informally before, without using surname or honorific. She had never spoken to him so in Father’s presence.
“Please,” he said, and it was a true plea. “Come with me.”
Mother’s eyes closed. She nodded once.
His face lit up. In that unguarded moment I saw triumph in his eyes. And something more. Something I could not name — a sort of hunger that was as hot as fury. I dropped my gaze as if that look had burned me, thankful that he seemed to have forgotten I was there.
When I peeked next, his face was composed again, solemn and sad, as if the other look had never been.
“We must leave at once,” he said, standing. “This is a cursed place now. I want to be off the lands before nightfall.” He reached down to help us both to our feet.
My legs wobbled as I rose, and he steadied me. “Careful,” he said, holding on to my shoulders. I did not want to meet his eyes again. I looked past him, at the squat beehive-shaped kitchen.
Youta stood there, in the doorway. Youta! How could I have forgotten him, after everything he had done for me? We had nearly left him behind.
I opened my mouth to call out to him, to tell Mother and Terayama-san of my savior.
Youta shook his head and put his finger to his lips. I hesitated, mouth still open, and he bowed to me, wincing at the pull to his poor ribs and stomach. Then the shadows of the kitchen seemed to shimmer and darken around him, and he was gone.
We traveled for four days to reach Terayama-san’s estates. The journey should have pushed us hard, unprepared as we were, but somehow it was all very easy for Mother and me. Mother explained that she had called on Terayama-san on her way home from her aunt’s, and he had escorted her back to Father’s lands. He had provided a palanquin, carried on the shoulders of six of his men. And that was why they had arrived together.
I barely listened to Mother’s words through my haze of exhaustion and grief; I could not think why she was telling me something about which I cared so little. When I saw the palanquin, though, it was so grand that I could not help but wonder at it.
It was gilded on the outside — the expense of which was beyond my imagination — and shining with newness. Fit for a princess. The hangings, cushions, and silks inside were all in Mother’s favorite shades of blue and silver. It was almost as if it had been designed and built just for her.
But how could that possibly be?
We hardly spoke to each other during those four days. I wanted to; I wanted to spill everything out, to tell Mother what had happened to Father and the servants and Aimi, what had happened to me. I wanted to tell her what I had seen and how I felt. The feelings bubbled up in my throat, burning like acid in my mouth, desperate to be expressed.
Only Mother would not let me speak. She shushed me and told me I did not need to remember — but I could not help remembering. She stroked my hair or held my hand tenderly and whispered, “I know, I know”— but she did not know.
She was not there.
No one knew except me.
The only time Mother asked me a question about that day was when she realized, as I climbed into Terayama-san’s shining palanquin, that I was not only filthy and covered in ash but also half naked. She bundled me inside, slammed the golden door, and drew down the silvery silk hangings at the windows.
“Suzume, where are your clothes?” Her voice had gone shrill and tight.
“I — I don’t know,” I said. As I tried to recall, my forehead began to ache. Everything else that had happened was horribly, painfully, clear in my mind, but as I tried to remember how I had lost my kimono, how I had fled from the soldiers, there was just a blank. “I think,” I said slowly, “I think I had to take them off to run. They were getting in the way.”
“Is that all?” she demanded. “The soldiers did not take your clothes?”
“No. They did not catch me. If they had, I would be dead, like —”
Mother put her arm around me, cutting me off with “It is all right. We will not speak of it anymore. Just remember, Suzume, that you should never do such a thing. Never shed your clothes like that again. It is not decent.”
Better naked and alive than decent and dead, I thought. Then all the defiance went out of me, and I cried and cried, the weight of sorrow pressing down on me until I could barely breathe. Mother covered me with blankets and stroked my hair, and shush-shush-shushed me whenever I tried to speak.
I could not stop being afraid. Tiny sounds, like a horse whinnying, or one of Terayama-san’s men unexpectedly coughing, would send me into a paroxysm of shivering. I had to squash myself into a ball in one corner of the palanquin and bury myself in blankets, unable to blink, to move, to make a sound, in case it sent me back there, back to that place of death.
It was unreal to me, that journey. Like a dream, or a nightmare. Nothing was right. Mother petted and cosseted me as she had never done before — at least not since I was tiny. Yet at the same time she seemed always distant, preoccupied, as if she was constantly straining to hear something I could not, see something I could not. Was it fear that occupied her, as it did me? Fear of the future that awaited us, or of the black-clad soldiers?
The only time Mother seemed to come back to herself was in the evenings, once the palanquin had been safely deposited on the ground and Terayama-san’s men had made camp. Terayama-san would visit the palanquin then, sharing our evening meal and talking to us about his plans to ensure our safety.
We were to take the name of Nakamura, a name that belonged to a distant branch of the Terayama family. We would be a widow and her daughter who had fallen on hard times and had written to Terayama-san for assistance.
I could tell Mother did not like that. It wounded her pride to think that she, the beautiful Yukiko, descendant of the House of Yoshinaga, should take the role of poor relation. That was, after all, the role she had made so uncomfortable for Aimi.
I surprised myself with the bitterness of that thought, and swiftly forced it away. Of course she was uncomfortable taking on another name and playing the role of a different person. So was I.
I could not understand how such a lie would even be possible. It was true that Terayama-san always visited Father, rather than the other way around, and that I had never been to Terayama-san’s estate. But Mother had only just been there — would not all the servants know her as Hoshima Daisuke-
san’s wife? They could not have forgotten so soon, surely? Unless . . . unless Mother had not visited Terayama-san at his estate. Unless they had been somewhere else . . . alone . . . together?
Such thoughts made me feel ill, and, forcing them from my mind, I kept my objections to myself. I was keeping most things to myself by that time. Since Mother would not let me talk about the things I so desperately wanted to, it seemed easier not to speak of anything. I was surprised at how easy it was to live in silence. Overnight I had turned from a twitterbird into someone who could hardly find the words for good morning.
Soon, I told myself. Soon we will be safe at Terayama-san’s house. Soon she will let me speak, and we will mourn together. Soon.
On the last night of the journey, Terayama-san came to visit us as normal. But instead of entering, he passed in the trays of food to Mother and then beckoned her to the door of the palanquin.
They spoke in low voices. Terayama-san reached out to touch the hand that rested on the frame of the door. She jerked it away as if he had given her a static shock, but as their conversation continued, her hand gradually crept back to its original position, and the second time he touched her, she turned her hand so that their fingers entwined.
Terayama-san’s smile flashed, brilliant white, over Mother’s shoulder. “Suzume-chan, I must speak to your mother privately for a few moments,” he said, leaning in. His words were for me, but his eyes never left Mother. For an instant I was reminded of the intent, unblinking stare of a cat waiting at a mouse hole. I shuddered.
“Try to eat something while I am gone,” said Mother — and she did look back at me, but only for an instant.
He helped her to step out, and the door closed behind them.
I could only manage a few mouthfuls of food. I was frightened to be alone, with the noises outside and the light getting dimmer and dimmer. My feebleness disgusted me. Who was this trembling idiot of a girl? How had such a weak, stupid little creature survived when others — so much braver, cleverer, and more lovely — had not? But the fear lay on me like a second skin, smothering and cold. I fumbled to light one of the lamps, and then, burrowing down under layers of pillows and furs, sang to myself, my voice tiny and wobbling, until I finally fell into an uneasy sleep.